The Two Brothers Part 21

"They are as wicked as the red a.s.s, and as spiteful as monkeys."

"It is part of their business."

"I have just seen Monsieur Beaussier, and he says he would not like to meet him in a dark wood; he saw him in the diligence."

"He has got hollows over the eyes like a horse, and he laughs like a maniac."

"The fellow looks as though he were capable of anything; perhaps it's his fault that his brother, a fine handsome man they tell me, has gone to the bad. Poor Madame Bridau doesn't seem as if she were very happy with him."

"Suppose we take advantage of his being here, and have our portraits painted?"

The result of all these observations, scattered through the town was, naturally, to excite curiosity. All those who had the right to visit the Hochons resolved to call that very night and examine the Parisians. The arrival of these two persons in the stagnant town was like the falling of a beam into a community of frogs.

After stowing his mother's things and his own into the two attic chambers, which he examined as he did so, Joseph took note of the silent house, where the walls, the stair-case, the wood-work, were devoid of decoration and humid with frost, and where there was literally nothing beyond the merest necessaries. He felt the brusque transition from his poetic Paris to the dumb and arid province; and when, coming downstairs, he chanced to see Monsieur Hochon cutting slices of bread for each person, he understood, for the first time in his life, Moliere's Harpagon.

"We should have done better to go to an inn," he said to himself.

The aspect of the dinner confirmed his apprehensions. After a soup whose watery clearness showed that quant.i.ty was more considered than quality, the bouilli was served, ceremoniously garnished with parsley; the vegetables, in a dish by themselves, being counted into the items of the repast. The bouilli held the place of honor in the middle of the table, accompanied with three other dishes: hard-boiled eggs on sorrel opposite to the vegetables; then a salad dressed with nut-oil to face little cups of custard, whose flavoring of burnt oats did service as vanilla, which it resembles much as coffee made of chiccory resembles mocha. b.u.t.ter and radishes, in two plates, were at each end of the table; pickled gherkins and horse-radish completed the spread, which won Madam Hochon's approbation. The good old woman gave a contented little nod when she saw that her husband had done things properly, for the first day at least.

The old man answered with a glance and a shrug of his shoulders, which it was easy to translate into--

"See the extravagances you force me to commit!"

As soon as Monsieur Hochon had, as it were, slivered the bouilli into slices, about as thick as the sole of a dancing-shoe, that dish was replaced by another, containing three pigeons. The wine was of the country, vintage 1811. On a hint from her grandmother, Adolphine had decorated each end of the table with a bunch of flowers.

"At Rome as the Romans do," thought the artist, looking at the table, and beginning to eat,--like a man who had breakfasted at Vierzon, at six o'clock in the morning, on an execrable cup of coffee. When Joseph had eaten up all his bread and asked for more, Monsieur Hochon rose, slowly searched in the pocket of his surtout for a key, unlocked a cupboard behind him, broke off a section of a twelve-pound loaf, carefully cut a round of it, then divided the round in two, laid the pieces on a plate, and pa.s.sed the plate across the table to the young painter, with the silence and coolness of an old soldier who says to himself on the eve of battle, "Well, I can meet death." Joseph took the half-slice, and fully understood that he was not to ask for any more. No member of the family was the least surprised at this extraordinary performance. The conversation went on. Agathe learned that the house in which she was born, her father's house before he inherited that of the old Descoings, had been bought by the Borniches; she expressed a wish to see it once more.

"No doubt," said her G.o.dmother, "the Borniches will be here this evening; we shall have half the town--who want to examine you," she added, turning to Joseph, "and they will all invite you to their houses."

Gritte, who in spite of her sixty years, was the only servant of the house, brought in for dessert the famous ripe cheese of Touraine and Berry, made of goat's milk, whose mouldy discolorations so distinctly reproduce the pattern of the vine-leaves on which it is served, that Touraine ought to have invented the art of engraving. On either side of these little cheeses Gritte, with a company air, placed nuts and some time-honored biscuits.

"Well, Gritte, the fruit?" said Madame Hochon.

"But, madame, there is none rotten," answered Gritte.

Joseph went off into roars of laughter, as though he were among his comrades in the atelier; for he suddenly perceived that the parsimony of eating only the fruits which were beginning to rot had degenerated into a settled habit.

"Bah! we can eat them all the same," he exclaimed, with the heedless gayety of a man who will have his say.

"Monsieur Hochon, pray get some," said the old lady.

Monsieur Hochon, much incensed at the artist's speech, fetched some peaches, pears, and Saint Catherine plums.

"Adolphine, go and gather some grapes," said Madame Hochon to her granddaughter.

Joseph looked at the two young men as much as to say: "Is it to such high living as this that you owe your healthy faces?"

Baruch understood the keen glance and smiled; for he and his cousin Hochon were behaving with much discretion. The home-life was of less importance to youths who supped three times the week at Mere Cognette's.

Moreover, just before dinner, Baruch had received notice that the grand master convoked the whole Order at midnight for a magnificent supper, in the course of which a great enterprise would be arranged. The feast of welcome given by old Hochon to his guests explains how necessary were the nocturnal repasts at the Cognette's to two young fellows blessed with good appet.i.tes, who, we may add, never missed any of them.

"We will take the liqueur in the salon," said Madame Hochon, rising and motioning to Joseph to give her his arm. As they went out before the others, she whispered to the painter:--

"Eh! my poor boy; this dinner won't give you an indigestion; but I had hard work to get it for you. It is always Lent here; you will get enough just to keep life in you, and no more. So you must bear it patiently."

The kind-heartedness of the old woman, who thus drew her own predicament, pleased the artist.

"I have lived fifty years with that man, without ever hearing half-a-dozen gold pieces c.h.i.n.k in my purse," she went on. "Oh! if I did not hope that you might save your property, I would never have brought you and your mother into my prison."

"But how can you survive it?" cried Joseph naively, with the gayety which a French artist never loses.

"Ah, you may well ask!" she said. "I pray."

Joseph quivered as he heard the words, which raised the old woman so much in his estimation that he stepped back a little way to look into her face; it was radiant with so tender a serenity that he said to her,--

"Let me paint your portrait."

"No, no," she answered, "I am too weary of life to wish to remain here on canvas."

Gayly uttering the sad words, she opened a closet, and brought out a flask containing ratafia, a domestic manufacture of her own, the receipt for which she obtained from the far-famed nuns to whom is also due the celebrated cake of Issoudun,--one of the great creations of French confectionery; which no chef, cook, pastry-cook, or confectioner has ever been able to reproduce. Monsieur de Riviere, amba.s.sador at Constantinople, ordered enormous quant.i.ties every year for the Seraglio.

Adolphine held a lacquer tray on which were a number of little old gla.s.ses with engraved sides and gilt edges; and as her mother filled each of them, she carried it to the company.

"It seems as though my father's turn were coming round!" exclaimed Agathe, to whom this immutable provincial custom recalled the scenes of her youth.

"Hochon will go to his club presently to read the papers, and we shall have a little time to ourselves," said the old lady in a low voice.

In fact, ten minutes later, the three women and Joseph were alone in the salon, where the floor was never waxed, only swept, and the worsted-work designs in oaken frames with grooved mouldings, and all the other plain and rather dismal furniture seemed to Madame Bridau to be in exactly the same state as when she had left Issoudun. Monarchy, Revolution, Empire, and Restoration, which respected little, had certainly respected this room where their glories and their disasters had left not the slightest trace.

"Ah! my G.o.dmother, in comparison with your life, mine has been cruelly tried," exclaimed Madame Bridau, surprised to find even a canary which she had known when alive, stuffed, and standing on the mantleshelf between the old clock, the old bra.s.s brackets, and the silver candlesticks.

"My child," said the old lady, "trials are in the heart. The greater and more necessary the resignation, the harder the struggle with our own selves. But don't speak of me, let us talk of your affairs. You are directly in front of the enemy," she added, pointing to the windows of the Rouget house.

"They are sitting down to dinner," said Adolphine.

The young girl, destined for a cloister, was constantly looking out of the window, in hopes of getting some light upon the enormities imputed to Maxence Gilet, the Rabouilleuse, and Jean-Jacques, of which a few words reached her ears whenever she was sent out of the room that others might talk about them. The old lady now told her granddaughter to leave her alone with Madame Bridau and Joseph until the arrival of visitors.

"For," she said, turning to the Parisians, "I know my Issoudun by heart; we shall have ten or twelve batches of inquisitive folk here to-night."

In fact Madame Hochon had hardly related the events and the details concerning the astounding influence obtained by Maxence Gilet and the Rabouilleuse over Jean-Jacques Rouget (without, of course, following the synthetical method with which they have been presented here), adding the many comments, descriptions, and hypotheses with which the good and evil tongues of the town embroidered them, before Adolphine announced the approach of the Borniche, Beaussier, Lousteau-Prangin, Fichet, G.o.ddet-Herau families; in all, fourteen persons looming in the distance.

"You now see, my dear child," said the old lady, concluding her tale, "that it will not be an easy matter to get this property out of the jaws of the wolf--"

"It seems to me so difficult--with a scoundrel such as you represent him, and a daring woman like that crab-girl--as to be actually impossible," remarked Joseph. "We should have to stay a year in Issoudun to counteract their influence and overthrow their dominion over my uncle. Money isn't worth such a struggle,--not to speak of the meannesses to which we should have to condescend. My mother has only two weeks' leave of absence; her place is a permanent one, and she must not risk it. As for me, in the month of October I have an important work, which Schinner has just obtained for me from a peer of France; so you see, madame, my future fortune is in my brushes."

This speech was received by Madame Hochon with much amazement. Though relatively superior to the town she lived in, the old lady did not believe in painting. She glanced at her G.o.ddaughter, and again pressed her hand.

"This Maxence is the second volume of Philippe," whispered Joseph in his mother's ear, "--only cleverer and better behaved. Well, madame," he said, aloud, "we won't trouble Monsieur Hochon by staying very long."

"Ah! you are young; you know nothing of the world," said the old lady.

"A couple of weeks, if you are judicious, may produce great results; listen to my advice, and act accordingly."